Sean Mac Bride & Fr. Sean Mc Manus in New York in the spring of 1976, eight years before the announcement of the Mac Bride Principles.

Arlene’s acquiescence making Martin mad

Posted By: November 09, 2016

Arlene’s acquiescence making Martin mad

Brian Feeney. Irish News (Belfast). Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Martin McGuinness must be delighted to be jetting off to the US. It gets him away from Stormont for four or five days which means he doesn’t have to stand biting his lip while Arlene Foster talks nonsense about Brexit.

Their recent joint appearances have reduced McGuinness’s mouth in his grim face to a lipless line.

The unspoken non-aggression pact that Sinn Féin and the DUP have been operating since the assembly election campaign can’t last.

It’s beginning to damage Sinn Féin on a range of topics but the divided reaction to Brexit will cause it to fall apart next year.

The DUP’s stupid position must be making him desperate. Every other leader of devolved administrations is asking for some sort of special consideration, with Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon in the forefront. She’s demanding the right for Scotland to conclude separate trading arrangements with the EU among a raft of other special measures.

Here, to the obvious amazement and disgust of Sinn Féin, Arlene Foster is only delighted to go along slavishly with anything that emerges from Downing Street without at this stage having the slightest inkling of what might emerge from Downing Street.

It doesn’t take a genius to know, first that there is intense disagreement and in-fighting in the British cabinet about what line to take in negotiations and secondly, that there is shocking ignorance about the EU among the politicians charged with negotiating Britain’s exit.

Since September we have had Theresa May announcing her intention for Britain to leave the single market, the customs union and the European Court of Justice, then rowing frantically back on leaving the single market and going silent on everything else.

We had Liam Fox, long ago discredited as an incompetent minister, demonstrating why he was forced to resign in disgrace in 2011. He talked about making bilateral deals with EU countries apparently ignorant of the fact the EU countries can’t make bilateral trading deals.

We’ll pass over David Davis not knowing that Ireland [i.e.,Irish Republic] is independent.

Doesn’t matter what nonsense they come out with – Arlene Foster grins and does her nodding-dog routine on a weekly basis supporting anything the UK government proposes, however idiotic. It goes without saying that the last thing on anyone’s mind in Downing Street is a process which will benefit The North. Our proconsul [the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland] —another nodding -dog May appointed because of his abject loyalty since 2010—is not on the cabinet committee devising Brexit policy. His passivity will be rewarded when he’s called in and told what has been decided.

At cabinet meetings he sits so far down the table Theresa May would need binoculars to see him.

Anyway, given his record since he rose without trace in 2010, he won’t say boo to a goose. He’s hardly Mr. Charisma 2016, which is probably why he ended up here.

Martin McGuinness has completely failed to convince Arlene Foster that The North needs special arrangements, special status, call it what you will. It’s no surprise. She can’t admit that McGuinness speaks for the majority of people here when it comes to Brexit.

She’s in denial about the inevitable dire economic consequences that must follow. Does it never occur to her for a second to wonder why Scotland, Wales and the Irish government are asking for special consideration? That intoning a mantra from the clueless Theresa about ‘the UK’ can only be damaging to The North? Is Foster out of her depth entirely or is she under the baleful influence of the superannuated DUP MPs who harbor delusions of grandeur at Westminster? Have they told her not to move a millimeter from servile adulation of the Prime Minister in the forlorn hope of some favors if the DUP save her neck as her slim majority reduces further?

It wouldn’t take much to buy their support. A minor adjustment to the Boundary Commission report, something on the past to block prosecutions of RUC or British army culprits.

You can be certain that whatever bribe they might be offered, it’ll be nothing to do with improving the economic problems of the north or invoking some procedure different from the rest of the UK.

Unionists never accept [that]if they are bought they can be sold.

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